The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1887-03-31
LINCOLN'S CAREER.
The Three Principal PerIod' OF tae Great
Statesman's Life.

The Three Principal PerIodS OF tae Great
Statesman's Life.
We shall see in the course of the
present work how the life of Abraham
Lincoln divides itself into three princi-
pal periods, with corresponding stages
Of his intellectual development; the first,
Of about forty years, ending with his
term in Congress; the second, of about
ten years, concluding with his final
campaign Of political speech-making in
New York and New England, shortly
before the Presidential nominations OK
1860; and the last of about five years,
terminating at his death. We have
thus far traced his career through the
FIRST period of forty years. In the sew
eral stages of frontier experience
through which he had passed, and
which in the main but repeated the
trials and vicissitudes of thousands
of other boys and youths in
the West, only so much individuality
had been developed in him as brought
him into the leading class of his con-
temporaries. He had risen from
1aborer to student, from clerk to law
yer, from politician to leg slator.
That he had lifted himself by
healthy ambition and unaided in-
dustry out of the station of farm
hand, whose routine life begins and
ends in a back-woods log to that
representative character and authority
which seated him in the National Cap
itol to aid in framing laws for his coun-
try, was already I an achievement
that may we'll be held honorably to
crown a career of forty years.
Such achievement and such distinc-
ton, however, were not so uncommon
as to appear phenomenal Hundreds
of other boys, born in log-cabins, had
won similar elevation in the many,
practical schools of Western public life.
Even in ordinary times there still re-
mained within the reach of average in
tellects several higher grades of public
service. 1t is quite probable that the
superior talents of Lincoln would have
made him Governor of Illinois or given
him a term in the United States Senate.
But the story of his life would not have
commanded, as it now does, the un-
tagging attention of rosteriiy had
there not fallen upon his generation
the usual conditions and opportunities
brought about by series of re-
markablc convulsions in National poll
tics If we would correctly understand
how Lincoln became, first conspicu-
,H lao1nr in
a great strife of National parties for
supremacy and power, we must briefly
study the origin and development Of
the great slavery controversy in Amer
ican legislation which found its high
est activity and decisive elimination in
the single decade from 1850 to 1860.
We should greatly err, however, if we
attributed the new events in Lincoln's
career to the caprice of fortune. The
conditions and opportunities OF which
we speak were broadly National, and
open to all without restriction of rank
or locality. Mlny of his contempora-
ries had seemingly overShadowing adj
vantages, by prominence n training,
to seize and appropriate them to their
own advancement. 1t is prec' 'sely this
careful study of the times which shows
us by what inevitable process of Sc
lection honors and labors of which he
did not dream fell upon him; how, in
deed, it was not the individual who
gained the prize, but the paramount
duty which claimed the man.-Atc0-a az
and HOu in (pDtHru